


The Panther

by JustAsSweet



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23902081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAsSweet/pseuds/JustAsSweet
Summary: It turns out the Manes Family Legacy doesn't actually have all that much to do with being a Manes. AKA Alex has seen enoughStar Trekto know that jar his father is holding is not good news.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	The Panther

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [why won't you set me free](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614324) by [Nielrian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nielrian/pseuds/Nielrian). 



> This is a remix of a wonderful fic by Nielrian that I first read on Tumblr. Alex's POV jumped out and grabbed me by the throat, so I had to write it down. I would recommend reading the original before this one; mine can stand alone but it ruins the surprise at the end of the original. The title is the title of a [poem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panther_\(poem\)) by Ranier Maria Rilke. See the bottom for more notes of spoilery content.

Alex was tired. He had spent the entire afternoon at the welcome parade that he hadn’t wanted to go to in the first place and all he wanted to do was go home and take his leg off. He leaned heavily on his crutch as he made his way to his car, only to be stopped at the door by his father’s voice.

“Alex, wait.”

Alex gritted his teeth and turned. There were just enough people around he had to be civil.

“Yes, Dad?” he asked, swallowing as many of his feelings as he could.

“I have something to show you, son.” Jesse was standing next to him now, his posture the usual ‘at ease’ stance he always adopted. But something was different. He seemed...anticipatory.

“Can it wait?” Alex was tired, he was so, so tired and he didn’t want to have to put up with his father’s bullshit if he didn’t have to. Not now.

“It won’t take long. We’ll take my car.” Jesse swept his arm to the side and gestured at his vehicle across the street.

Alex clenched his jaw and glared at his father, groping for an excuse that wouldn’t alert him to how much pain he was in right now.

“Come on, son.” Jesse said, steel in his eyes. “It’s a day of celebration.”

Alex swallowed hard and looked away. He couldn’t...there were too many people. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine.”

He limped over to the car with Jesse and sat in stubborn silence as Jesse drove them to an unfamiliar location. He got out and waited as his father walked over to what looked like storm cellar doors and knelt, placing his palm on something. Alex craned his neck, unable to see clearly. His father opened the doors and beckoned Alex over.

As he made his way carefully down the stairs, Alex tried not to gawk at the sight that greeted him inside. Monitors and tables set up in neat lines down the length of the concrete bunker. He knew this, this was a military set up. How long had it been here?

“What is this?” he finally asked, looking to his father who was watching him closely.

“This is our legacy, son.” He gestured to a chair that was pulled out from the table. “Have a seat.”

Alex reluctantly made his way over and sat heavily with a wince. He would have remained standing, but his leg couldn’t take much more punishment today. His father stood over him, regarding him briefly, then turned to look at the large monitor display at the end of the room.

“You know the story I’m sure. Over 50 years ago, a UFO crashed here in Roswell.”

Alex scoffed before he could help himself, but quieted when Jesse turned and stared him down. He didn’t know where this was going, but aliens had honestly been the last thing he expected.

Jesse punched a sequence into a keyboard and pictures came up onto the screens. Pictures, autopsy pictures. Except…

Alex stared at the screens, not quite believing what he was seeing.

“The Antarans thought they could run from us. They were wrong.” Jesse continued as if nothing was off, as if he wasn’t talking about aliens like they were real. Alex shook his head, trying to quiet his mind into a plan.

“Look, I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull-”

Jesse shot a glance to somewhere behind Alex and suddenly he felt strong hands gripping his shoulders. He jerked violently but they held him in place. He whipped around, and found two of his brothers on either side of him, stone faced.

“Tie him down.” Jesse instructed them, almost dismissively casual.

For the first time, a bolt of real fear tangled in Alex’s stomach.

“This is a new low, even for you dad.” He needed to talk, distract them. He watched as Flint produced zip ties and began binding his arms and legs to the chair. But Jesse was out of his line of sight, rummaging in one of the lockers where he couldn’t see. “People will notice if I go missing, they just threw me a parade! You can’t possibly think you can get away with this!”

“Ah, but son. That’s the beauty of it.” Jesse walked back in front of him, holding a jar of...something. Liquid of some kind. With a lump about the size of a slug undulating in the center. “You’re not going anywhere, Alex.”

Alex didn’t know what the gray mass was, but he had seen enough Star Trek to know that slug looking creatures and humans were two things that did not mix well. His father unscrewed the lid and reached in, taking whatever it was gently out as he walked towards Alex. He jerked at the restraints, straining as far away from the thing as he could, but his father simply placed it at his jaw and stepped back.

He felt it, cold and slimy at his ear at first and it was _moving_. He tried and failed to suppress a full-body shudder, and then there was pain. Unimaginable, indescribable pain, like nothing he had ever experienced. It was _inside_ his head, he could feel it, and he might have been screaming but he couldn’t tell anymore.

His thoughts started to go fuzzy and this, this he knew. He waited for the darkness to swallow him like it had with his leg, but all that faded was the pain. He felt himself sagging in the chair, not understanding how or why he was still conscious. And then a voice spoke.

**Hello, Alex.**

\-------

Alex still wasn’t used to it, this thing in his head. He had no control, none, over his own body. Every word, every move, every breath was controlled by the creature inhabiting his brain. It had an unbreakable grip over him and all he could do was watch and feel and see and hear from within his own mind, trapped and unable to interact with the outside world. He had only the creature for company.

He felt it, more frequent at first and less now, when it rifled through his memories in order to face a situation or person new to it. The thing would read him like a book and slip his personality on like a perfectly fitted glove; no one he spoke to, casual acquaintance or close friend, noticed anything different about him. Whatever it was, it seemed designed to inhabit its host without raising the suspicions of the people around it. And it was very good at it.

After the first fruitless day of raging inside his head, becoming more and more desperate to somehow snap himself out of it and finding it impossible, he decided on a tactical retreat. Lie low, gather intelligence. Get the lay of the land and wait for the thing to make a mistake. He was along for the ride now, whether he liked it or not.

Today was routine. He was on duty, a run-of-the-mill round of property vacation notices on the land the USAF most recently decided they wanted. At least, it was run-of-the-mill before his arm was grabbed and his world came to a screeching halt.

“Hey, that’s private property!” was all the warning he had before his body was jerked to the side from the force of the contact. And there, standing in front of him, was Michael Guerin. If he had had any control at all over his body, Alex knew his heart would have leapt into his throat. As it was, there was only a flutter of activity from the creature.

 **You know this man.** It said, and Alex could feel it begin to access his memories.

 **NO!** He was forceful enough he could tell he had taken the thing by surprise. Alex knew he had seconds, Michael was still talking but that would only last so long. He mustered all his feelings of rage at his current situation and threw it at the creature, hoping it would be enough.

 **He took something from me, something I could never get back.** Alex stoked his anger, allowing himself to feel it much more deeply than he normally would. He needed this to work. He needed Michael to be as far away from him as possible.

 **Ah.** The thing considered. **An enemy. I had thought humans too weak-minded to indulge in such a thing. Perhaps I was wrong.**

Alex’s field of view shifted as his head turned to look over his shoulder at his father. Or, more accurately, at whatever was controlling his father. It was looking for guidance, Alex realized. It got a carefully blank stare in return, and it seemed to come to a decision.

When Alex heard himself speak, it was with an undertone of tightly reigned anger; annoyance at having been caught unawares. He saw Michael slide into his abrasive, stick-it-to-the man persona in response to Alex’s tone, and he focused on how much it hurt to see it directed at him. It made it easier not to fall into relief when Michael slammed the door behind him, cutting himself off from Alex.

The reprieve lasted until the reunion, when Michael was there again. The biting words they spat at each other were working, right up until “Did it get old for you?”

Michael shoved away and Alex felt the thing pause. Before he could react, before he could think how he could salvage the slip, his memories were pulled apart and spread out in front of him. All the kisses and touches over the years, his fingers in Michael’s hair, Michael’s skin hot under his palms, Michael’s eyes looking at him soft and sincere, the bruising grip of hands at his hips, the scratch of nails down his back, all flashed through Alex’s mind’s eye and he knew it was over.

 **I have underestimated you.** The creature seemed grudgingly respectful for a moment. **It will not happen again.**

And when Michael appeared later, in the doorway, Alex felt the thing respond differently. He heard his own shift in tone, he saw the way he didn’t stare Michael down this time and he felt despair roll through him. The imitation was perfect, it was exactly how he would have reacted in this situation. Michael didn’t stand a chance.

When Michael kissed him, Alex wanted to scream, cry, throw up, or maybe all three at the same time. He wanted to shove Michael away from him and tell him to run, run far away so that he would be safe. But Alex could do none of those things.

Instead all he could do was feel Michael's mouth hot on his, the way it always was. The way his stubble burned and the way his breath came in desperate gasps against Alex's lips when he finally pulled away, resting his forehead against Alex's like he couldn't bear the thought of not touching him.

Alex had never hated himself more than in that moment.

\-------

This was the actual worst day of Alex’s life. It shouldn’t be an easy thing to determine, not with his history, but this was by far the worst. The things, the creatures that were currently apparently puppeting his entire family, had decided to make Michael one of them.

At the discovery that he was an alien, and _that_ had been its own shock, the decision had been made to bring him under their control. Of the three actual aliens that Alex had attended high school with without suspecting a thing, Michael was the obvious choice. By his own admission more separated from Max and Isobel than they were from each other, Michael would be the easiest to pick off and control without being noticed. They had concocted a story to get Michael out alone with them, then separated him from the group to prepare the creature that would inhabit him.

Alex watched the planning through helpless eyes, unable to do anything to stop it. But then, as Flint turned up with a jar that Alex knew only too well, an alarm started blaring.

Alex’s body jerked, and he felt himself turn to Flint. Flint looked at him with wide eyes, the thing inside him clearly panicked.

“I don’t know what happened, that’s the self-destruct alarm! We have minutes!”

“Go, get out.” Alex heard his voice and felt the surge of anxiety.

 **You can’t leave him here, he’s too valuable.** Alex pointed out, trying to suppress his own panic at the thought of Michael being trapped in this place.

He felt the thing consider, felt it make a decision. He found himself rushing through a hallway and up a flight of stairs, and then through a door and down another flight of stairs where Michael seemed to be trying to beat his way through a door with a fire extinguisher. Alex’s creature was focused on Michael, but Alex was taking in all the cells and the figures within them around his peripheral vision. Maybe the story hadn’t been concocted after all.

“Guerin! Come on, we have to go, now!” Alex heard the words tear from his throat, and he saw Michael turn.

“We have to get through!”

“The alarm is not a suggestion, ok, nothing gets out alive!” The creature was appealing to Michael’s sense of self preservation, but Alex knew with a rising sense of panic that that wasn’t going to be enough.

 **He’s not going to listen!** If he could have had a voice, Alex would be shouting. He could feel the thing waver, its own survival instinct kicking in.

“They’re my family, Alex!” Michael was desperate, his eyes wide and manic. Alex knew it wasn’t going to work, _Michael wasn’t going to leave_. He felt the creature make a decision, saw it look to the stairs, felt it take a step in preparation to run.

 **No. _No._** Alex saw the crack in the thing’s hold, saw what its panic had done to it. Saw his chance and seized it. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, Alex planted his feet of his own accord. He could feel the creature’s shock, but he shoved it to the back of his mind and focused on Michael.

“Alright, maybe!” And it felt the same as when he was speaking before but it was different, he _knew_ it was different, and when Michael turns Alex thought maybe he could hear it too. Alex frantically searched for the words he needed, the words that would make Michael come with him. “But you are mine!”

He meant every desperate syllable, so when Michael reacted only with confusion Alex could have screamed. Michael wasn’t getting it, he wasn’t coming with him.

Michael was going to die.

Alex was almost surprised to find that he didn’t want to exist in a world without Michael Guerin. Surprised that he would feel that hopelessness now, of all times, when he had taken a backseat in his own body for months. But he shouldn’t have been, not really. Even as he was fighting tooth and nail for control over his own body, Alex realized the only thing that would truly take his will to live was Michael not being there anymore.

The thought calmed him somehow, and he settled on the words he needed.

“I don’t look away, Guerin.” Alex watched it hit Michael, saw Michael’s eyes widen in shock like he’d been physically struck and he was vaguely aware of Michael babbling in response. But he didn’t listen, not really. He was focusing too hard internally. He clenched his fist as if it would help, but it was too late. He wasn’t strong enough. The creature wrested control from him and in the back of his mind Alex was aware of tears streaking down his face. It hadn’t been enough. He had failed.

But then everything seemed to come to a stop as the woman in the cell raised a glowing palm to the glass, and even the thing in Alex’s head stilled. For what seemed like an eternity, the world held its breath. And then everything came crashing back in and Alex could feel Michael against him, clutching desperately for something, anything, to hold him upright, and then they ran.

Outside Alex saw Michael’s grief, raw and bleeding, before his body turned away from him. Alex would have comforted him if he could have, but that was the irony of the situation. There were, it turned out, worse fates than death.

\-------

Alex was sleeping so he didn’t notice at first. Well, sleeping in the only way he knew how. Having no control over his own body left him little option, but he found at times that he could zone out in a way. Let the real world he was experiencing through eyes and ears that didn’t belong to him fade into the background. He had been in the bunker doing data entry while Michael and Liz worked quietly, not much else was going on but now...he had been awoken by hunger.

Not in the sense of his body needing nourishment, in the sense that the thing pulling his strings needed nourishment. This was new.

 **Lose track of time, did you?** Alex asked. Come to think of it, it had been a few days since he had last been tied up somewhere, underground, blindfolded with his prosthetic detached and tied up with a pretty little bow for when his own personal hell was done feeding. It had never gone more than two, two and a half days without it. Now it was edging on three.

He got no response, but felt the thing’s distaste. The laptop dinged with an alert and his attention was pulled down.

 **Tornado warning. Huh. That sounds bad.** Alex was starting to get the idea that this wasn’t a casual hunger, that this might be something more serious.

The voice in his head remained stubbornly silent, but began packing up the things on the desk as if to head out. Alex heard Michael and Liz talking in the background but he focused on the presence in his mind. Something was off. This wasn’t normal, there was almost an anxious undertone.

“-you’re staying put.”

Alex tuned back into the conversation at the snap in Michael’s voice, and felt himself turn to look at him. There was a wash of vicious, violent hatred that rolled over him from the thing in his head before it was quashed, but Alex saw Michael’s eyes narrow slightly in response to whatever he saw in Alex’s face.

Alex felt himself sit though, and get his work back out. The outburst seemed to have been smoothed over with Michael and Liz, but Alex was alert now.

 **What happens if you don’t eat?** He pushed against the thing, prodding it to see what it would do.

 **Silence, human.** It snapped, rage flaring again. It fell quiet and refused to answer any more of Alex’s questions.

But after a few hours, Alex could tell it was in real trouble. He felt it get up and begin to pace, the hunger now an ever present pang that seemed to ache all through him.

 **They’re going to notice soon** Alex pointed out, still trying to focus on what exactly was bothering him about the presence in his mind. **You’re acting too weird, they’re going to pick up on it.**

There was nothing in response but a silent growl, and Alex felt rage flicker against his consciousness again. But that wasn’t all it was...if he could just-

His body hit the corner of the tabletop, and he went down. Or started to, he felt Michael catch him with his powers. Alex ignored the pain though. Unfamiliar as he was with the creature in his brain, he knew if he concentrated he could get a solid read. Liz and Michael were talking again but he blocked them out and focused his attention internally. Until he felt his body pinned entirely. Then he didn’t even have to try, fear and panic bloomed in his mind with barely a nudge.

“Let me go.” He heard himself say. His eyes were looking at the ladder to the hatch but Alex was captivated by the novelty of the situation inside his own mind.

 **You’re dying, aren’t you.** He said. It wasn’t a question, only one thing could push the creature to such extreme lengths. **You’re starving to death right now and you can’t do a thing about it.** His growing wonder was interrupted by the feeling of Michael’s powers tightening on his body, and air left his lungs in a gasp.

“What are you doing? Let go of him!” Liz was moving to his side but the thing in his head was focused on Michael. Michael, who was looking at him with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. Concentration and anger were written all over his face, and Alex felt a tiny stutter of hope.

“Liz, get away from him”

The hope blossomed, and Alex dared to think that maybe...maybe this time…

 **He knows. He knows, you fucked up, he KNOWS.** Alex could’t stop himself from gloating, the giddy feeling of relief uncontainable after weeks, _months_ , of hopelessness.

**Be SILENT!** The thing in his head roared, but he could feel its fear and he knew it had lost control.

“What? Why?” Liz’s confusion barely registered, all Alex could see was Michael’s face hardening in determination in front of him. He thought he might explode at the sight, for once not even the creature’s rage and panic were distracting to him.

“Because that’s not Alex.”

Michael looked like a wrathful angel, and he had never been more beautiful in Alex’s eyes.

\---

They zip tied him to a pipe in the corner, and even the plastic biting into Alex’s wrists over hours of listening to the creature wheedle and cry and scream at the others failed to suppress his glee.

**You’re going to die. You’re going to die and rot and you will get the FUCK out of my head.**

The thing managed to chuckle, dark amusement rolling through Alex.

**There will be others, human.**

Alex mentally recoiled, suddenly seeing flashes of memory he knew were not his own. He couldn’t make sense of them right away, they were too alien, but was that...

 **You cannot...be allowed...to see…** The thing seemed out of breath somehow, but that became immediately unimportant as agony ripped through him. He might have started screaming again, he couldn’t tell over the sheer force of the pain in his head. He finally sagged, his weight resting on his abused wrists over the pipe, too dazed from the pain to focus for a moment.

But then he could feel it, feel the thing on his neck, and he jerked away in disgust. There was nothing in his head now but the visceral need to get it _off_ , get it _away_ , so he pulled his training from the depths of his memory and slammed his wrists down on the pipe once, twice, three times until the zip tie snapped. As soon as his hands were free he swiped it off his neck, legs collapsing under him even as he did it.

It wasn’t enough, he could see it wriggling away from him and something under the adrenaline that was screaming through his brain knew it needed to die.

He ignored the commotion in the room and hauled himself up on the pipe he had just been tied to. He nearly fell again, unsteady on the prosthetic he hadn’t walked on by himself in over a year, but he used his upward momentum to make a grab for the nearest table. He pulled himself up and over and slammed his good foot down in a desperate swing.

Bullseye.

He heard it, and felt it, squish under his boot and only then did he slide to the floor like his strings had been cut. His right leg and hip were on fire and his breaths were coming in gasps and he couldn’t stop trembling with the adrenaline rush but he was _free_. He was free.

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically an Animorphs crossover. The thing in Alex's head is a Yeerk.


End file.
